Chinese Peruvians, also known as tusán (a loanword from Chinese 土生 pinyin: tǔ shēng, jyutping: tou2 saang1 "local born", but potentially from 台山 Cantonese: Toisan, pinyin: Táishān, jyutping: toi4 saan1, referring to the Cantonese town of Taishan in the Guangdong province of China, where much of the Chinese immigration to north and South America originated), are people of Overseas Chinese ancestry born in Peru, or who have made Peru their adopted homeland.

Most Chinese Peruvians are multilingual. In addition to Spanish or Quechua, many of them speak one or more Chinese dialects that may include Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka, and Minnan (Hokkien). Since the first Chinese immigrants came from Macau, some of them also speak Portuguese. In Peru, Asian Peruvians are estimated to be at least 5% of the population.[3] One source places the number of citizens with some Chinese ancestry at 1.300.000, which equates to 2% of the country's total population.[4]

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Asian slaves who were shipped from the Spanish Philippines in the Manila-Acapulco galleons to Acapulco were all called "Chino" which meant Chinese, although in reality they were of diverse origins, including Japan, Malaysia, The Phillipines, Java, Timor, and people from Bengal, India, Ceylon, Makassar, Tidore, Terenate, and China.[5][6][7][8] Filipinos made up most of their population.[9] The people in this community of diverse Asians in Mexico was called "los indios chinos" by the Spanish.[10] Most of these slaves were male and were obtained from Portuguese slave traders who obtained them from Portuguese colonial possessions and outposts of the Estado da India, which included parts of India, Bengal, Malacca, Indonesia, Nagasaki in Japan, and Macau.[11][12]Spain received some of these Chino slaves from Mexico,where owning a Chino slave showed high status.[13] Records of three Japanese slaves dating from the 16th century, named Gaspar Fernandes, Miguel and Ventura who ended up in Mexico showed that they were purchased by Portuguese slave traders in Japan, brought to Manila from where they were shipped to Mexico by their owner Perez.[14][15][16] Some of these Asian slaves were also brought to Lima in Peru, where it was recorded that in 1613 there was a small community of Asians made out of Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Malays, Cambodians and others.[17][18][19][20]

One hundred thousand Chinese contract laborers, 95% of which were Cantonese and almost all of which were male, were sent mostly to the sugar plantations from 1849 to 1874 during the termination of slavery. They were to provide continuous labor for the coastal guano mines and especially for the coastal plantations where they became a major labor force (contributing greatly to the Peruvian Guano Boom) until the end of the century. While the coolies were believed to be reduced to virtual slaves, they also represented a historical transition from slave to free labor.

After their contracts ended, many of them adopted the last name of their patrons (one of the reasons that many Chinese Peruvians carry Spanish last names). Some freed coolies (and later immigrants) established many small businesses. These included chifas (Chinese-Peruvian restaurants - the word is derived from Cantonese 饎飯 (Jyutping:ci3 faan6) which means "to eat rice or to have a meal." Calle Capón, Lima's Chinatown, also known as Barrio Chino de Lima, became one of the Western Hemisphere's earliest Chinatowns. The Chinese coolies married Peruvian women, and many Chinese Peruvians today are of mixed Chinese, Spanish, and African or Native American descent. Chinese Peruvians also assisted in the building of railroad and development of the Amazon Rainforest, where they tapped rubber trees, washed gold, cultivated rice, and traded with the natives. They even became the largest foreign colony in the Amazon capital of Iquitos by the end of the century.